Namaste
Green Lotus believes that honouring the environment is central to the practice of yoga and wishes to
encourage yoga practitioners to practice ahimsa (non-violence) in relation to the earth. The word
Yoga, as we know, means 'union'; and specifically refers to the union of the individual with the absolute.
This union not only refers to a spiritual connection, but also a physical one, as the yogic belief is that
the physical in the embodiment of spirit. Similarly Ayurveda teaches us that the five elements that
constitute the universe we live in are also inherent in our own physical make-up. This concept is re-
inforced by the yogic theory of the subtle body which is composed of five sheaths or Kosas relating
to the five elements:

    1) Anatomical                (annamaya)                 Earth
    2) Physiological             (pranamaya)                Water   
    3) Mental                       (manomaya)                 Fire
    4) Intellectual                 (vijnanamaya)               Air
    5) Blissful                       (anandamaya)              Ether


The final goal of yoga is to experience (not intellectually, but feeling though the body) a deep sense
of connection with the manifest and unmanifest universe also referred to as 'the  absolute'. In the
Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic) and the tantric traditions, we believe that our own physical bodies like
the physical reality we perceive around us is a manifestation and reflection of spirit; that in order to
perceive God we need only to look around us or even simpler within us.
Unlike the transcendental or closer to home Catholic tradition, the Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic)
belief maintains that God is not something other, above us or beyond us, but something we are apart
of and that is apart of us. It is interesting to note here that some philosophers argue that Christ's
teaching's 'I and the father are one' and 'The kingdom of God is within you' are more similar to
Buddhist and Tantric perspectives than the Catholic Church would have us believe, which would make
Christ a yogi in some senses. Of course in those days such spiritual perspectives were not appreciated
and as we know Jesus Christ was hung for his beliefs. Anyhow without getting too deep into the
nitty gritties, suffice to say that the non-dual perspective honours the earth and all physical reality as
an aspect of the divine; or as Ken Wilber so accurately and non-dogmatically sums it up:

    ''all things and events are equally members of one body, the Dharmakaya,
    the mystical body of Christ, the universal field of Brahman, the organic pattern
    of Tao. Any physicist will tell you that all objects in the cosmos are simply
    various forms of a single energy ''Brahman", "Tao", "God", or just plain
    "Energy" seems to me quite besides the point."

So what is the point? If we are to identify with the absolute and recognise that everything we see,
touch and hear is a reflection of the universal dance of cosmic energy, of which we are apart  of, we can
deduct that by harming the environment, we are indirectly harming ourselves. And so I will finish by
encouraging all yogis and yoginis reading this, to go green and practice ahimsa in relation to the earth
as we do on the mat. I have supplied details how to below.
Just click here  Going Green
So the world, grounded in
a timeless movement by
the soul which suffuses it
with intelligence, becomes
a living and blessed thing.
                                             
                                             
                    Plotinus

'
How to go Green
manifestations of the of spirit,
so that spirit is woven
intrinsically into each and all
and thus the entire material
and natural world was, as
Plato put it, "a visible, sensible
God"
                                                                        
                         Arthur Lovejoy